Patočka can be seen as Husserl’s direct heir. Indeed, Husserl’s bestowal of the desk lectern, which he himself had inherited from Tomáš Masaryk, upon Patočka might be read as a symbolic gesture of transmission. One significant area of divergence, however, between Patočka and Husserl is their view of the natural world, or the Lebenswelt. For Patočka, transcendental subjectivity encountering a pristine natural world, a life-world of pure evidence unencumbered by history, is a philosophical dream. Instead of transcendental subjectivity being the locus of truth, he argues, particularly in the Heretical Essays, that life in truth, which is not a primarily reflective activity, only occurs when philosophy, politics and history emerge and continue as a free and conscious problematization of truth. History proper, according to him, is a creative act of freedom; and at its heart is philosophy as the practice of the care of the soul manifesting itself through political life in a community built on freedom. Husserl’s epochē and how it brings forth phenomenon as phenomenon remains a crucial step for Patočka, and his approach seeks to deepen Husserl’s insight to show the transformative power of the freedom revealed by the epochē. This freedom, though only a negative one, opens up the possibility of a movement toward the care of the soul. In Patočka’s thoroughly heretical and original reading of Plato’s Chorismos, the freedom to live a truthful life emerges as a fundamental human experience.